PAT ROCCO DARED

BOB CHRISTIE + MORRIS CHAPDELAINE | CANADA | 2022 | 90 MIN | ENGLISH

Pat Rocco’s films of the 60s featured plenty of nudity, as this no-holds-barred documentary can attest, yet they transcended pornography, offering groundbreaking glimpses of gay men exploring self-affirming, romantic, and erotic lives everywhere from the L.A. freeway to Disneyland. A vision as utopic as this personal history is comprehensive.

Extraordinary is too understated a word to describe Pat Rocco, a trailblazing artist and activist. Beyond showing gay men positive images of themselves on the big screen, including the first film featuring two men kissing, Rocco documented a world in flux, pointing his lens at Harvey Milk during a fiery, pivotal speech; documenting the police harassment of a Black dancer; and offering the spotlight to a trans woman. And he gave back to his community: spearheading an emergency queer housing program in Los Angeles. To convey the breadth of Rocco’s achievements, multi-hyphenate Charlie David (Dante’s Cove) walks down memory lane with Rocco inside his memorabilia-packed house in Hawaii and sits down with activists and scholars like Torontonian Syrus Marcus Ware. Rocco’s “unusual displays of queer presence” are parsed and celebrated, the body figured as a vehicle for radical change.

screening at Cinéma J.A. de Sève| NOVEMBER 27TH 4.30PM

ONLINE (November 28th to December 2nd)